Good grief, don't you guys do backups? You can backup your entire MySQL database every night with one command. This is terrible for those of us who write thoughtful posts. And I agree with Grave's comment about too many discussion forums. Just stick to the news and get rid of the feature bloat.

You're getting an awful lot of posts from newbs who have made anywhere from a handful to a few dozen posts, and who say they are confused. Perhaps some practice would reduce their confusion level. I find the forum layout simple and easy to navigate, with a wide variety of topics for everyone. Censoring, cutting back, pruning forums is not in the best interests of free speech. A simple test will prove my point: For those who advocate fewer forums, let's eliminate the forums that they have posted on. See what I mean? Those who advocate "less" on the DP forums would most likely not want their own comments eliminated. So, let's not eliminate others' comments because a few people, who are not yet familiar with the environment here, are confused. If a forum has zero posts for months, then perhaps it is a candidate for removal. But let's not start pruning away forums, even those with only one or two participants, if they are still active, or if they still contain relevant commentary.Thanks for all of your efforts. Keep up the good work!

karmagirl wrote:And can we have the html <strike> tag added? It can be a fun one.

Yeah, I'll second that and also second this one:

karmagirl wrote:Can we please work on consolidating threads? I've counted as many as 3 different boards on the exact same article/topic, and it makes things very hard to follow and keep up with

Also, besides boards on the same topic, sometimes the article changes and the original article is just gone (and I don't mean just some minor editing or additional information either).

Also, some of the placement of articles just seems arbitrary and capricious. Why are some political articles that aren't strictly local going in local politics, others in politics West, and still others in general articles? Same with sports; some in sports and some in general articles. It's very annoying to say the least.

Also (and the data base had to be lost, just as I'd gotten some new people interested in participating and trained on where to find the forums), why on the home page is it not obvious how to get to the forums? Could we change the neighbors heading to forums? At least on the home page? I appreciate that it's "forums+" including blogs, photos, poems, and niches, but "neighbors"? Anyone else have a suggestion for a word here? I'm guessing that the idea was to find a friendly word for "online community", but "neighbors" is NOT intuitive to potential new members...

Some words I'd like to see added to the ground rules bot:retard, retarded, and 'developmentally disabled moronschizophrenia and schizophrenic

BTW, is there somewhere where we can see what words are on that bot list? And, sometimes you may have to add foreign words of English equivalent too...

Can you please eliminate font size increases, or, in the alternative, let the increase stand to let people express themselves and make something stand out, but just reduce the size of increase allowed (leaving colors is fine though)?

Can you set a smaller max size for photos? And/or somehow make it so those who want to expand another reader's photos have the option, but others don't have to have a large photo imposed on them?

nisperos wrote:Some words I'd like to see added to the ground rules bot:retard, retarded, and 'developmentally disabled moron schizophrenia and schizophrenic.

Generally I agree with nisperos; he's a pretty sharp guy. But in this case I have to say, "no more censorship." If we are going to eliminate "retard" then why not "slow"? How about "impaired"? "challenged"? "moron"? "person"? "stupid"? "imbecile"? What if the discussion is about psychology or brain-function? Or even engineering? Engineers often need to "retard" a process. Then it becomes a challenge to communicate basic ideas about the topic. If we eliminate schizophrenia and schizophrenic, then we must also eliminate Anorexia Nervosa, Antisocial Personal Disorder, Anxiety Disorder NOS, Asperger's Syndrome, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Autism, Avoidant Personality Disorder, Binge Eating Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Breathing-Related Sleep Disorder, Brief Psychotic Disorder, Bulimia Nervosa, Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, Childhood Disorder NOS, Childhood Eating Disorders, Cognitive Disorder NOS, Conduct Disorder, Conversion Disorder, Cyclothymic Disorder, Delerium, Delusional Disorder, Dementia, Dependent Personality Disorder, and Depersonalization, to name but a few. Censoring foreign words too? Still a bad idea. Font sizes? Photos? Perhaps we should just have the Dp staff write our posts for us and edit them to make sure that they offend no one.Essentially trying to make everyone exactly like the censor is a bad idea and antithetical to free speech. Nisperos, a lot of people find your posts offensive and you've been criticized for them. (Not by me).Shall we censor those too? I think free speech for everyone is the only acceptable alternative.Keep up the good work. I enjoy your posts. But I don't agree with your ideas on censorship.

[quote="vercingetorix"]Generally I agree with nisperos; he's a pretty sharp guy. But in this case I have to say, "no more censorship." If we are going to eliminate "retard" then why not "slow"?[/quote]

Well, retard should be blocked, because the only usage it has these days is to insult and offend. Same with euphemisms and slang for body parts and bodily functions that are meant only to be offensive. We all know what they are.

But I do think there are too many words in the Post's ground rules. Words that are perfectly acceptable medical/psychological terms or the regular, scientific words for body parts or bodily functions should be allowable.

So I would argue strongly against blocking schizophrenia or any medical expression for a physical or mental illness.

pbreet wrote:How about removing all the "offensive" words from the banned list.

There is a way around all of it, so why play games?

My take on that: Offensive and bad words are like cookies in a cookie jar. Making it hard to use those words is the same as putting that cookie jar on a higher shelf. The higher the shelf, the harder it is to get that cookie. The harder it is to get that cookie the fewer people will do it.

The X-MP/Y-MP Projects lost a weeks worth of data when a Sun Server Admin was teaching me the proper way to bring up said server. He was demoing the steps on the LIVE server and claimed that he had safeguarded the mag tape unit (read only). He hadn't....When he punched the button, the Sun 360 immediately went into the setup script, repartitioned the drive and started to format...It took a month to totally recover..and I still got my Sun Server Admin certs...

Bringing up an integrated DB backup solution can be pretty straightforward with the right software and setup.

On censorship:

Engineers still use the word retard. Most of the School Buses up here use the retard system of braking.....so the possibility of retarding a bus full of retards could be said..but not be PC. I could also say that my stroke has retarded my ability to respond to left side stimuli.That is the REALITY I have to deal with every day. PC has nothing to do with it. Am I OFFENDED? No, BECAUSE THAT IS REALITY!! That should be the rules when it comes to PC and CENSORSHIP or you get some of the silly consequences of blocking certain words. Making that cookie jar harder to reach is the best compromise. The determined ( like me ) will still figure out a way to get the points across.Most of my comments are based on an engineer's view of REALITY with a few witticisms thrown in.People may not like REALITY, but it is what we have to survive every day....The alternative is a Thorazine drip feed...

40 years of surviving tends to do that to a person

Last edited by The_Punnisher on September 16th, 2008, 10:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

joemurphy wrote:My take on that: Offensive and bad words are like cookies in a cookie jar. Making it hard to use those words is the same as putting that cookie jar on a higher shelf. The higher the shelf, the harder it is to get that cookie. The harder it is to get that cookie the fewer people will do it.

Love that post... I don't mind having to get around the the magna c-u-m laude bot when I need to. "I just want to know what's on the list so that I can fix them before I post rather having to edit later". If I use a word in a way that's legit and not name calling, someone can report me all they want and the post will stand. I think most know the difference between someone saying "sorry you are the b-u-t-t of a bad joke" and calling someone a b-u-t-t.

B-u-t-t is a fairly mild word IMHO (at least compared to A**), so I'm not sure why it's on the list. OTOH, m-o-r-o-n is a word whose first meaning used to be to describe a person with a certain degree of mental retardation, but now it's mostly used as an insult.

I've seen r-e-t-a-r-d used so many times as an insult lately compared to the few times this word might be used to mean "to slow down a process"...

It's all a judgment call, of course, but judgments can change. It's the J. David McSwane discussion - not entirely about free speech, but rather about civility too. You can write it without fully spelling it out and most everyone knows exactly what you mean. You can also certainly do more than only post a four letter self-promotion... It's the forum, not the beer pong party or the hot tub room at the apartment club house where some sophomoric guy thinks it's hilarious to leave porn in the hot tub room for an unsuspecting 13 year old girl and then run in with a towel barely covering themselves to retrieve it.

[quote="joemurphy"][quote="pbreet"]How about removing all the "offensive" words from the banned list.

There is a way around all of it, so why play games?[/quote]

My take on that: Offensive and bad words are like cookies in a cookie jar. Making it hard to use those words is the same as putting that cookie jar on a higher shelf. The higher the shelf, the harder it is to get that cookie. The harder it is to get that cookie the fewer people will do it.

[url=http://neighbors.denverpost.com/viewtopic.php?t=12348298]For those of you interested in the discussion around our January "Ray of Sunshine" day, when we moderated the heck out of the comments, you can read that here[/url]. It's somewhat related.-Joe[/quote]

Ah, the censorship here, one of my biggest pet peeves...

While I can understand why things like the f-word should probably stay out of public forums, you also censor non-offensive words like the medical term for some body parts - notably p-enis. But as you can see, I can still almost type the whole thing, which not only defeats the purpose, but I believe makes this site seem immature. It's not an offensive word, it's the correct word for that. And as someone else said, b-utt? Really? This is 2008. B-utt should offend no reasonable person, which is where the line should be drawn.

Then you also censor certain historical figure's names, H-itler, S-talin, etc. So even in relavent topics, half the posts consist of nothing but ************************. As well, when any of those words are contained in another word it gets censored. It's like you're trying to re-write history.

I understand that what some people consider ok others mind find offensive, but I personally find it ridiculous to censor the correct, medical terminology for body parts as well as historical names. From comments I've seen around the board, I don't think I'm alone.

I wouldn't agree with that. Trolls are called out by other members immediately, but in my experience they stick around and continue posting the same stuff over and over and over, many times in multiple threads. Some of the blame always goes back to those who feed the trolls (of which I have been guilty), but it's rare that I see someone who is always trolling have their posts (or themselves) removed. HumanBeans is a great example of that, with his slew of Obama/Osama "jokes" yesterday in the Obama visits Pueblo thread.

karmagirl wrote: And as someone else said, b-utt? Really? This is 2008. B-utt should offend no reasonable person, which is where the line should be drawn.

Then you also censor certain historical figure's names, H-itler, S-talin, etc. So even in relavent topics, half the posts consist of nothing but ************************. As well, when any of those words are contained in another word it gets censored. It's like you're trying to re-write history.

I understand that what some people consider ok others mind find offensive, but I personally find it ridiculous to censor the correct, medical terminology for body parts as well as historical names. From comments I've seen around the board, I don't think I'm alone.

Here is where I have to agree somewhat, though I can kind of understand why.

As to the b-utt, I don't get it at all. Even SpongeBob is saying it. Remember the episode where there was the new bully in Mrs. Puff's Driver's Ed class? That word was said at least three dozen times. When the whole smoking debates were going on, it was kind of difficult to carry on a conversation.

(Dear God, too much time around children. Must. Get. Life.)

As to the historical reference to one German leader in particular, I think it might refer to Godwin's Law, which says that that inevitably every ongoing online discussion will refer to You Know Who, or to his Party, and when that happens, the discussion is over. Whoever brings up the bad guy essentially loses the argument. So perhaps it is a preemptive strike (like a Bush Doctrine!) sort of method of keeping things from wading into Godwin's Law.

karmagirl wrote:Whoa, and what's up with quotes? They don't seem to be working so well on this board for anyone but you, Joe. Is there a different tag we need to use now or something?

Missing CSS file?

Nope, not CSS. I don't know why that's happening... I had set the "max number of nested quotes" to 8 -- that could have triggered an error in the regular expression (pattern-matcher) that makes the quotes look the way they should. I re-set "max number of nested quotes" to infinity.

[quote="gardengirl"][quote="karmagirl"] And as someone else said, b-utt? Really? This is 2008. B-utt should offend no reasonable person, which is where the line should be drawn.

Then you also censor certain historical figure's names, H-itler, S-talin, etc. So even in relavent topics, half the posts consist of nothing but ************************. As well, when any of those words are contained in another word it gets censored. It's like you're trying to re-write history.

I understand that what some people consider ok others mind find offensive, but I personally find it ridiculous to censor the correct, medical terminology for body parts as well as historical names. From comments I've seen around the board, I don't think I'm alone.[/quote]

Here is where I have to agree somewhat, though I can kind of understand why.

As to the b-utt, I don't get it at all. Even SpongeBob is saying it. Remember the episode where there was the new bully in Mrs. Puff's Driver's Ed class? That word was said at least three dozen times. When the whole smoking debates were going on, it was kind of difficult to carry on a conversation.

(Dear God, too much time around children. Must. Get. Life.)

As to the historical reference to one German leader in particular, I think it might refer to Godwin's Law, which says that that inevitably every ongoing online discussion will refer to You Know Who, or to his Party, and when that happens, the discussion is over. Whoever brings up the bad guy essentially loses the argument. So perhaps it is a preemptive strike (like a Bush Doctrine!) sort of method of keeping things from wading into Godwin's Law.[/quote]

I completely understand the Godwin's Law concept, but people who use h-itler's name to that affect usually get called out on it anyway. I think we all know that pulling that does no one favors. But h-itler has been relavent in certain threads in non-Godwin's Law ways, and it really disrupts those conversations.

I think if you're going to censor Adolf H-man and his political N-party then you must censor Kim il Jung; Pol Pot; Josef Mengele; Hermann Goering; Robert E. Lee; Confederates; Benedict Arnold; Napoleon; Genghis Khan; Atilla the Hun; heck, Vercingetorix; and Caesar too; Alexander the Great; to name but a few. Where do you draw the line? And how can people be offended at someone's name? Or the name of a political party? We're just using words here. Not bullets or bombs; words.